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Lies and ConsequencesWhy are book editors so bad at spotting fake memoirs?

By Meghan O'RourkePosted Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 3:44 PM ET

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So, what do editors think might be the best way to deal with this problem? "You can destroy the books and reprint, but that is prohibitively expensive," said Jonathan Karp, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Warner Twelve, a new publishing initiative. "Basically, the genie's out of the bottle," he continued. "Most publishers now have online catalogs—so, I guess technically on each book you could refer people to the catalog page for additions and corrections. I don't know if anyone's thought of that." Elisabeth Sifton, senior vice president at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, said, "There aren't official procedures, but the supposition is that editors need to be smart and well-trained enough to spot this stuff. The editors are supposed to do some work here—not just have lunch and sign up the book. They are supposed to get to know the author, know the text, roll up their sleeves, and work to learn what the real truth is. And then they should give the copyeditors guidelines for further checking." About issuing disclaimers in cases like these, Sifton said, "It's purposeless, except to save face."

Interestingly, many of the editors I spoke to—several of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity—felt that they would never have let such a hoax slip through. And yet according to Kirkpatrick, Gerald Howard, Lerner's editor, had carefully tried to vet Lerner, building up a relationship based on trust and scrutinizing the text Lerner sent every week; they spoke regularly by phone. Even so, Howard apparently never requested to see Lerner's court documents or asked his parole officer for the details of the crime—or, if he did, he apparently decided the disparities were not worth itemizing. Perhaps a too-personal relationship makes it harder to apply professional rigor, which may have been the trouble Sean McDonald, Frey's editor, ran into; reportedly, in the course of editing, the two struck up a friendship.

Obviously, in the post-Frey era, editors will show more due diligence. In the meantime, mushy disclaimers don't go far enough in outlining just how false the information in books like these really is. A purist might argue that publishers ought to destroy copies of a book that's full of manipulative fabrications. But—setting aside the question of expense—pulping a book that's still in demand may smack of censorship. Instead, publishers invested in accountability might consider pulling books from stores and limiting their availability to mail-order sites—or, since many books are ordered at Amazon.com and bn.com, announcing there that the product is not as it was advertised. Whatever the case, publishing houses should ensure that their own disclaimers are formulated in clear language, itemizing the author's liberties and making it evident that they are serious about packaging work accurately. The paperback version of You Got Nothing Coming includes an author's note that promises to do just this. Instead, just like Frey's note, Lerner's trumpets the "emotional truth" of his story. It indicts his critics as scolds who didn't get the "literary" motivations for Lerner's alterations: In making the Monster physically huge, Lerner was letting us know that this guy seemed huge to him. (Uh, thanks. That changes everything.) And then he offers a squirrelly apology—one that Frey echoes closely. Out of personal weakness, he confesses, he tried "to present myself as a far braver, stronger, and more heroic person than I really was—or am." (Compare this with Frey's line.) Recently, a spokesperson for Riverhead suggested that changes might be made to future editions of My Friend Leonard. Let's hope they include a new disclaimer that's a little less self-serving than Lerner's.

Part of the predicament editors face, of course, is the continuing appetite for this type of overblown story. Sales for Frey's books may have dropped since the Smoking Gun allegations were made public, but it's not as though the marketplace has turned its back on Frey. Lerner's book is apparently being made into a Hollywood movie starring Liam Neeson. No one's fooled that all the confessional lore that claims big audiences and spots on Oprah is exactly true. But because of labels like "memoir" and "nonfiction," we have to pretend the spectacle is based in reality. So, perhaps instead of rigorous policing, we need a new name for this hybrid category. We're talking about stories inspired by gritty real life—stories that claim to be outrageously "authentic," like the best reality TV, while also playing up their own tabloid qualities. Maybe Doubleday didn't need an author's note; it needed Barnes & Noble to set up a new section in the bookstore. Coming soon to an outlet near you: "Reality fiction."